in here remember Alfred Hitchcock’s
films birds okay do you remember how
that movie made you feel I know when I
was a small child or a young child when
I watched that movie it’s scared to live
in crap out okay you think about birds
coming down and attacking you biting at
your eyes and things like that that was
pretty terrifying you know and as a kid
with an imagination I said what if this
really happened but I was consoled by
the thought that this is a film this
can’t possibly have fact of the matter
is it did that this film was based on an
actual event that occurred in Santa Cruz
California in 1961 where sea birds
descended on that City erratically
flying into people buildings cars
what-have-you they weren’t really
motivated by anything sinister or
malevolent like you may have been
suggested by the movie what more than
likely happened in the plausible
explanation is they were suffering from
poisoning from a harmful algal bloom
toxin called the Moak acid now this is a
toxin that gets into the food chain
it’s produced by algae it’s consumed by
a small fish or clams or mussels this
small fish are then consumed by a larger
fish that are in turn eaten by birds sea
mammals and people it has a lot of bad
effects
it basically disrupts your brain
circuitry and that’s probably what these
birds were experiencing domoic acid is
really just one example of a harmful
algal bloom toxin
there are many depending on the type of
bloom and what exactly is a harmful
algal bloom when colonies of algae grow
in an uncontrolled explosive manner they
can produce a huge biomass that can
actually stretch for over 100 well over
100 miles and lengths they are generally
associated with discoloration of the
water and can also be associated with
really foul smells they can occur both
in
marine environments as well as
freshwater habitats in Florida a lot of
people are normally used to having
events that we call Florida red tide
that also affects people parts of Texas
that produces a very potent neurotoxin
similar mullick acid in New England in
the Gulf of Maine people are familiar
with something called saxitoxin which
can in some cases induce paralysis in
freshwater environments and I’ll talk a
little bit later on about some things in
the Great Lakes you normally will have
what are called blue-green algae bloom
events these also carry a number of
different types of potent toxins
including neurotoxins and toxins that
why do we call them harmful they have a
number of different types of impacts
that are not good we’re really concerned
at least I’m concerned with the kinds of
health impacts that that can be
experienced as a result of exposure to
these toxins they can cause things like
amnesic shellfish poisoning diuretic
shellfish poisoning paralytic shellfish
poisoning they can affect respiratory
systems for people who have chronic
respiratory disorders like asthma or
emphysema they can cause liver cancer in
some cases they can attack our immune
systems they also can be lethal if you
have acute doses and sometimes our pets
can get exposed to them and they can be
lethal to the pets as well so a lot of
health consequences that related to
exposure to these toxins they can also
pack impact the local ecology or aquatic
ecosystems in terms of when you have a
bloom event the blooms can deplete all
the oxygen in the area and what that
generally results in or massive massive
fish kills as well as killing the types
of animals that rely on these fish for
their support as well as actually
poisoning the animals themselves
it can also have a lot of impact on the
economy of local regions if you have a
bloom event going on generally what
happens is beaches get closed you affect
the tourism a lot you disrupt commercial
fishing operations you may have to close
shellfish beds and they can wreak havoc
on fish
so there’s a big economic impact so
these are why we call them harmful bloom
events or harmful algal blooms and I’m
showing this slide because this
represents some of the newspaper
clippings from across the country just
in 2015 where there were bloom events
between 2012 and 2015
there was a tripling in the number of
times popular newspapers reported
harmful bloom events across the country
and I don’t want to indicate the court
or give you the idea that this is just
happening in this country this is
happening globally and again because of
the types of health effects we have
these these are very important I think
probably many of you may have seen in
the past week a lot of news events
talking about a harmful algal bloom
event in Florida closing down a lot of
the coastal area around Stewart Florida
this is really a picture of some green
slime I can’t tell you what’s in it is
not good I can see my son when he was
kid they used to watch something on TV
where it was cool to get hit with green
slime if you didn’t know the answer to
something this is not cool this is not
nice you don’t want this green slime on
you the reason I want to talk about
harmful algal blooms is in these events
is they’re not new they’ve been here
with us forever but they are the the
frequency of them is increased
increasing at an alarming level both the
frequency is increasing and the duration
or persistence of the events is
lengthening and and and why are these
events and the length of the events why
are these increasing there are probably
a number of drivers but two of the
primary drivers are associated with
human activity the first one I want to
bring to your attention is runoff does
anybody know what I mean by runoff okay
you can have agricultural operations
runoff you can have livestock operation
runoff you can have sewage runoff these
all this runoff gets into the
groundwater it gets into streams
tributaries rivers ponds lakes
ultimately the ocean and what’s in the
runoff to the
three things I talked about fertilizer
okay we put fertilizer in the
agricultural fields what livestock waste
is producing as well as sewage that’s
fertilizer too so what we’re basically
doing is we’re doing a lot of nutrient
loading in the water we’re feeding the
blooms that’s one of the big reasons why
they’re growing we’re actually feeding
them there’s huge fruit supply for the
blooms to grow on the other thing that’s
driving this is climate change warmer
temperatures warmer water is conducive
to a longer growing season so you have
that impact with the longer growing
season the other thing that climate
change is doing is it’s changing
precipitation patterns when we see an
increase in the volume and intensity of
the rainstorms were getting kind of like
last night this really increases runoff
so we’re accelerating the deposition of
nutrients into the water so this is
these these are really important and
humans activities are really related to
this so we live here in the Triangle
area in North Carolina where we haven’t
had a little lot of impact by harmful
algal blooms or their toxins why should
we care about this well we’re citizens
of the world globally over 60% of the
pop world’s population lives in coastal
areas so they had this high risk of
exposure we use the oceans for many
things we use it for transportation
commerce recreation and food the oceans
supply the largest source of protein in
the world okay far exceeding whatever we
get from livestock or poultry operations
so we need to be concerned as citizens
of the world what’s going on over 50
percent of the u.s. population actually
lives in coastal counties so this is
this is important to our national health
because we’re talking about the largest
source of protein that runs the risk of
being contaminated from harmful algal
bloom toxins
I want to bring your attention also to
the Great Lakes as an example harmful
algal blooms that occur in fresh waters
don’t just occur in Great Lakes but I
want to bring this area to your
attention because over 40 million people
live in the Great Lakes basin between
the US and Canada and we rely on the
Great Lakes basin for much of what we
rely on with the ocean in terms of
transportation recreation commerce and
food but something else very important
that we rely on the for and that would
be drinking water the Great Lakes is the
largest supply of fresh water in the
world anywhere and it’s the largest
supply of drinking water we have in this
country so when we have events that
impact the quality of the water that we
drink that’s a problem you may remember
a couple of years ago about this time
there was a huge massive bloom event in
the western part of Lake Erie that ended
up shutting down the water supply to the
city of Toledo Ohio that’s something
that got a lot of news play all the
events don’t get national or
international press but this is
something that is probably going to
occur more frequently in the future and
we recognize that there are lots of
people who are exposed to this most in
the coast and in Lakes Great Lakes areas
in other areas where we have aquatic
bodies of water or what putties worth
that’s a lot of people that are at risk
for this emerging health challenge but
there are some segments of the
population of they’re going to be a more
at risk or more vulnerable to these risk
and that’s going to include pregnant and
nursing moms the elderly children people
that live on subsistence diets as well
as folks who are economically
disadvantaged and what are we doing to
try to protect these people in the
health as a nation we have an obligation
to try to protect our citizens I work
for the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences and we
work collaboratively on a number of
projects with other federal agencies
we’re either collaborating or doing
something complementary to what they do
and that has to do with trying to reduce
the burden of the environment that it
places on human health one of the ways
that we’re trying to reduce the impact
of harmful algal bloom toxins is to
learn more about
molecular mechanisms of toxicity in
other words how do these toxins make
people sick if we learn more about how
they make VOC sick then we have an
opportunity to develop effective
therapeutic interventions and strategies
to treat them but wouldn’t it be better
if we were able to actually prevent or
reduce the exposures altogether so
people aren’t getting sick so what many
of the federal agencies are engaged in
is doing monitoring and surveillance by
deploying very sophisticated instruments
into the deep ocean that will measure a
number of biological and geophysical
properties and things that can help us
forecast better if we know what types of
events occur before a bloom is going on
then we’re able to predict that event
better and able to actually develop ways
that we can help warn people
another thing that’s used is extensive
use of satellite imagery to be able to
track blooms and we take the data that
we get from these deep-sea instruments
as well as the tracking of the satellite
images to try to develop novel
algorithms that will help us better
predict the reason for doing this type
of science is because we want to
translate this science into effective
public health policy that will help warn
people and educate them when a bloom
event is coming what types of risks
there they run and how they can best
protect themselves so I want to kind of
start to close here by bringing us back
to the domoic acid example I gave you in
the beginning and telling you how the
science that we support is actually
impacting public health policy to
protect people in the Pacific Northwest
around the Puget Sound there are a
number of tribal populations that rely
heavily on razor clams razor clams is a
big source of where domoic acid can
bioaccumulate and get in there and
expose people through consumption of
those scientists working with some of
the tribal populations have determined
that people who are considered to be
heavy consumers of razor clams
experience very severe memory decline
okay when we say a heavy consumer that’s
someone that eats over 15 razor clam
among these are pretty good-sized males
razor clams are typically about the size
of this hand so people that eat that
they’re eating a lot of razor clams
these investigators meeting with tribal
councils as well as medical advisors
have determined that they don’t want
their children exposed to this at any
level so they’ve enacted policy where
they have very severe and stringent
warnings against pregnant and nursing
moms and children eating razor clams at
all regardless of what the level of
toxin is and them at all they just want
to protect their kids this is very
important cuz this is a real win in
terms of using the scientific data
that’s been generated to impact public
policy and protect our citizens so what
I’d like to do is really just kind of
close by saying we haven’t been really
impacted by harmful algal bloom toxins
in North Carolina in the Triangle region
yet the operative word there is yet so
I’d like to thank the generator for
giving me an opportunity to talk to you
about this today and thank you all as well